Open Source

Apr 24, 2018

What’s Exciting About The New MySQL 8.0?

With MySQL 8.0 GA now available, there is a lot of buzz online about the new features that are sure to make the lives of DBAs and developers a whole lot easier. To drum up interest in the new release, MySQL has been asking heavyweights from all over the world to send in videos of what they are most excited about with MySQL 8.0.

Tencent is excited about the new MySQL!

David Jiang of Tencent is one of them. Jiang revealed that the company has been using MySQL for their online payment services: WeChat Pay and QQ Wallet. WeChat Pay is a payment system included in the company’s popular instant messaging app. The service allows for WeChat users to pay using their mobile phones using their own bankcards. Meanwhile, QQ Wallet allows you to pay via your mobile phone using your bankcard by scanning QR codes or via NFC terminals. Aside from the payment services, QQ Wallet also integrates various services, such as life services, financial services, and public & government services.

Jiang shared that there are several things to look forward to when it comes to the new MySQL 8.0. He mentioned that several issues have been fixed for this release.

For instance, Jiang mentioned the enhancements to the InnoDB, particularly the persistence of the maximum auto increment counter value, making it more persistent even when you restart the server. With MySQL 8.0, the maximum auto-increment counter value will be written onto the redo log every time the value is modified. This is also saved to a system table at every checkpoint.

What’s more, server restarts will no longer affect the AUTO INCREMENT = N. If you have a server restart after a ROLLBACK, your current auto increment stays, instead of the values that were used during the rollback transaction.

Of course, there are new features to be excited about. Some of it includes the following:

Data dictionary. MySQL now features a transactional data dictionary. This data dictionary will store information about various database objects. This changes the way dictionary data is stored in previous releases, where they were stored in non-transactional tables or in metadata files.

Atomic Data Definition Statements. Atomic DDL statements bring together the updates to the data dictionary, binary log writes that are related to a DDL operation and storage engine operations into one atomic transaction.

Better security and account management. MySQL 8.0 helps database administrators become more flexible when managing accounts while also helping them be more mindful of security. MySQL 8.0 now features the new caching_sha2_password authentication plugin, which uses SHA-256 password hashing like the previous plugin, but everything is now cached to lessen latency during connect time. The new plugin is also compatible with more protocols and you do not to link it against OpenSSL if you want to use RSA keys to exchange passwords. This is a more secure encryption for passwords compared to the previous mysql_native_password plugin, and is faster than the previous sha256_password.

MySQL 8.0 also offers supports roles. Rather than relying on privileges, these roles allow you to have collections of privileges that can be created, dropped, granted, or revoked.

The new MySQL also has data on password history. If you want your users to avoid using an old password, you can now easily do it with MySQL 8.0.

Furthermore, MySQL 8.0 introduces FIPS mode if you compile it using OpenSSL. FIPS mode allows for conditions on encryption operations available to you, such as requiring longer key lengths and what an acceptable encryption algorithm is.

MySQL 8.0 also has better resource management. It now allows you to create and manage resource groups and to assign threads to these groups so that these can be executed according to the resources that are earmarked for that particular thread.

There are a lot more features that have either been added or improved with MySQL 8.0. If you want to upgrade to the latest version, you do not have to fret about it. You can rely on Four Cornerstone for that! Just call us at (817) 377-1144 today!